March 10, 2011

We sees protesters entering through a Democratic legislator's office window. There are incendiary speeches through a bullhorn outdoors. Then, Meade finds an open door and videos the scene inside, including the confusion of the state troopers. Toward the end, you can overhear his side of a phone conversation with me.

0:15 — See the open window near the Wisconsin Ave. entrance to the Capitol. Then the window is closed, supposedly to protect the Democratic legislator whose office is on the other side. We hear someone say "What's to lose anymore, man?" And somebody else says "What's up with that shit?" [ADDED THE NEXT MORNING: As I've blogged here, that is the window of the office of Cory Mason, a Democrat of Racine. Before "What's to lose anymore, man?" and "What's up with that shit?," you can hear someone say, "They don't want to get this representative in trouble." He then responds: "They let a few in but they said..." It's garbled at that point. Maybe you can make it out.]

1:08 — You hear Meade saying that he saw people going through the window, before it was closed, chanting "Our house, our house..."

1:55 — Speeches, outdoors. "It's called the Industrial Workers of the World... At times like this, they tend to rise up, and help us accomplish our goals."

2:50 — "You can't recall Walker. You have to force him to resign... Strike... We're going to shut down state government... A series of mass strikes, otherwise it's over... Blockade government buildings... We have to make Madison a shining example to the world... General strike..."

8:23 —3 state troopers, seemingly overwhelmed. One says "I'm good." Somebody says "I have an appointment with the Governor. My name is Cocksucker." You overhear Meade describing things over the phone with me. "The troopers are way outnumbered."

From the CNN article about this story, under the 'other news' mini-headline, I kid you not.

"Some protesters remained inside the Capitol building a couple hours after the vote. Most of the protesters who had gathered outside earlier in the day were gone. However, authorities expect demonstrations to pick up again Thursday."

CNN's front page reads more like a tabloid these days. The Dalai Lama and a gruesome murder get top billing, followed by Charlie Sheen, American Idol, and Spider Man, and OH YEAH there's some actual effin' news off to the bottom left.

The Libyan protesters are going to die as America and the West offer nothing more than supportive words.

Here is Hillary Clinton punting:

British and US officials were at pains to play down any hopes of swiftly putting a no-fly zone in place during a Nato defence ministers' meeting in Brussels. "We want to see the international community support it," Hillary Clinton said. It was "very important that this not be a US-led effort," the Secretary of State said, voicing the Obama administration's determination not to be seen as leading a Western military attack on a Muslim country without a specific international mandate.

The Communist bacillus entered the U.S. bloodstream and was just a bit more slow growing and undetectable. It is now obvious the public employee unions have been their crown jewel. So just as the economy is about to go down and there is push back these leftist devils and useful idiots go off the deep end. Hilarious. Yeah, Madison, bring back the torture and genocide and political repression of the 20th century. That's what the world needs.

Meade's footage of the protests is really awesome. What strikes me as odd is that the protests in Washington are outdoors, the people aren't storming the Capitol building. I'm sure the f.b.i. wouldn't allow it, and yet the Wisconsin law enforcement is enabling the protests and even relishing in the anxiety of it all, laughing and joking with the people. Protesting in the Wisconsin Capitol seems derogatory to the integrity of what the Capitol represents, which is leadership and government, and the people at the moment seem ungoverned because they are storming in, seemingly uncontrolled. "fight with emotion", a guy says, "not with violence," and yet they are precipitating violence through their outbursts and raids of a building not necessarily suited for the masses. It takes just one tragedy, one fatality in such a mob of people to turn and blame the government for homicide, at a level comparable with Tiananamen Square. I think the protest movement is reaching its capacity. I also wonder that the people are protesting Walker, a Wisconsin governor, shouldn't they be protesting in Washington to undermine his power, rather than chanting in Wisconsin where a good number of legislators have evacuated. Something seems disorganized and futile about the protests.

This is what the left has been about all along. As long as the vote goes mostly their way, things run smoothly.

But try to reduce their power in any way, and they want to kill you.

The left has only ever been about taking power. It's their only metric. All else, the talk of human rights and diversity and social justice, is bullshit for the useful idiots to chew on while they take over.

So much for building security. How did the window get opened? Interesting that it was a democrats office window if the reporting is correct. In any case, it is not a stretch of the imagnination to suppose that the bill signing was expected, at least one window was designated as a point of ingress, the State Troopers made a modest but futile attempt to control the building, and the anarchists are back in "the people's house" as if it were the 60's again and they were camping in the Dean's office.

Come on Troopers, you had to see this one coming. No building inspection for security purposes to see if the premises were secure? No lockdown to seal the building? This is one pathetic example of lack of preparedness or, worse, collusion between law enforcement and organized labor.

Makes you wonder how much trouble a terrorist would encounter entering that same building with intent to cause mayhem. The community organizer's fingerprints are all over this one, albeit, at a measured distance with plausible deniability.

When the sun comes up I hope the building is cleared and protected from further disgrace at the hands of these professional agitators and their useful idiot wannabes who are subverting lawful elections. The ringleaders are domestic terrorists who should be arrested and tried. Follow the money and find out who is providing support and indict them under RICO.

Like Obamacare, the people who stormed the Madison capitol know better than the stupid WI sheeple what they really need, so even if those hicks and dolts voted for a GOP majority, their superiors ain't gonna let that keep them from power.

I love the idea of a general strike. The unionized industrial base in Wisconsin will grind to a halt. The ships won't sail. The trains won't run. The black smoke from the factories will disappear from the horizon. Somewhere in the most remote corner of Wisconsin, an old lady will call about a Medicaid bill and the phone will ring and ring and ring and ring.

Question for those at the scene: Is there any reason the legislature has to assembled at the Capital? Could they simply assemble a quorum at some other location.

Clearly the demonstrators wished they could have interrupted yesterday's vote and will likely attempt to interrupt future votes.

Could the state let them have the use of the Capitol for the season and do its business at some other location?

The next legislation I would propose is an act to allow legislators to vote via video conference. Everyone get a computer camera and a microphone and the business of the state can be done anywhere. It's a robust, distributed, fault-tolerant model. The rural legislators should appreciate it.

I am sure the juvenile antics will convince WI voters to recall all the republicans and reverse the horrendes bill just passed

Kudos to wisconsin republicans (and to Ohio as well) for curbing the power of public unioins

IMO the major issue has been removing the requirement that the state collect union dues from union members--the interesting question to me is how many of the unionistas will VOLUNTARY pay their union dues--esp in the fact of 3.50 a gallon gasoline.

Rev @1:11 -- I thought my comment was easy to read, but I'll spell it out for you. The continued protests, with the sleep-ins and the threats of implied violence, are how the left will lose the middle.

Madison: It's hilarious to read that ricpic thinks this is orchestrated from the White House.

The New York Times: "officials and union leaders said, reports of the involvement of the Democratic National Committee — specifically Organizing for America, the grass-roots network born of Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign — were overblown"

I'd suggest they wait until later in Spring. More snow, means the need for plows. No plows running means sentiment against unions becomes very negative, very quickly.

The trouble with public unions is that people sympathize with unions only as long as it is convenient.

They might agree in a poll, but they still want their services. It's not like they can just use another government while this one shuts down.

And the longer this goes on, the more it becomes clear this is not a workers strike like in the early 20th century where men and women were desperate to feed their families, and were among the lowest classes.

This is, again, the privileged fighting for their privileges, the very definition of the middle or upper middle classes saying, "more, more, more."

This is the vocationally obese demanding that bread is not good enough anymore. They want cake, and they want to take their cake from the desperate and citizens of Wisconsin.

These are people with good jobs that have good benefits hoping to gain support for their goodies from people with no jobs or insufficient jobs.

This is the image of bureaucratic bourgeoisie throwing a tantrum to protect their state of inviolate privileges.

And it has absolutely nothing to do, except in name, with what happened in the early 20th century.

In his essay "The Princess Casamassima," Lionel Trilling noted the irony of the liberal "exhausting the scrupulosity which made him deprecate all power and becoming extravagantly tolerant of what he had once denounced, or the idealist who takes license from his ideals for the unrestrained exercise of power.

By definition, the left cannot ever have the middle - it is not theirs to "lose". They occupy territory so far outside the range of normal that the middle has no relevance to them. They are loonies, communists, international (non-)workers and leeches. It is good that they are behaving in such a rotten way for all to see.

The demon-strators have clearly shown why Scott Walker is right in wanting to strongly limit the power of public service employee unions. As so often happens with pathology, the host is harmed the most. (Little rhyme.)

I have read that the assemblymen are using state troopers to protect them as they come and go because they feel the local police cannot be trusted. I wonder if there is any confirmation of this?

I am all for a general strike since these people have made it abundantly clear that they are not fit to hold the positions they currently have. It would be a fine opportunity to remove a lot of the rot. I certainly can't imagine people being happy about having to turn the care of their children over to these sorts. No good could possibly come of such a thing.

If the cops go on strike too then all the better. This isn't Europe yet and people are expected to perform the duties for which they are being paid. I don't know Wisconsin law but any state that lets their law enforcement officers strike deserves what they get.

Man, it feels good to not be on that side! I would be hiding from embarrassment. I was a young liberal once and a little uninformed, but never as completely clueless as these people seem, even when I was stoned.

I too support a general strike followed by mass firings, and then opening all those jobs to citizens who want them at reduced (sustainable and private equivalent) benefits. There would lines around the block with many superior and motivated applicants. The people deserve access to those jobs.

Question for those at the scene: Is there any reason the legislature has to assembled at the Capital? Could they simply assemble a quorum at some other location.

I don't know the specific rules for the WI legislature. But generally, most charters just state the meeting must be announced ("open meeting stuff") and that announcment should provide the time and location of the assembly.

Actually, I think it would be extremely short sighted for a government to be specific with a rule that the meeting must take place in the Capitol. For instance, let's say the Capitol became uninhabitable due to a major natural disaster. Such an event would likely require quick government action, which may need legislative assembly. But what to do, if you can't use the Capitol to assemble and that's the rule? If you want another concept, watch any one of the Hollywood post apocalyptic movies with provisions for Congress to meet in some sheltered bomb proof location.